An extensive European study last week found that Facebook was “dead and buried to teenagers” as the young sought refuge in messaging apps such as Snapchat and Whatsapp, away from the prying eyes of their parents. What could be worse than to be digitally stalked by parents, aunts and uncles? Teenagers want their privacy back.

But the real danger to Facebook – and other digital behemoths that make money from our data and content – is what will happen when the grown-ups decide they want their privacy back too. As John Naughton makes plain on other pages today, these companies have perfected surveillance as a business model. They spy on us for commercial gain. For now, the grown-ups don’t seem worried. They should listen to their kids.

Lured by “free” services on the internet, we click through to a digital emporium where we sacrifice our privacy. Every click, message and electronic trail is mined for profit. Every digital stroke makes money for them. The more time that you spend, the more money they make. There is little they don’t know, almost nowhere they can’t follow and nothing they can’t tell about your digital life.

As Naughton says: “The implication is that privacy is a transactional good – something you own and that can be traded.” This data – our electronic imprint – is feasted on by commercial companies and by governments, as the Snowden revelations made clear. Bulk collection of data on this scale in the public and private sphere threatens democratic values and infringes human rights.

The net has effectively been captured. Government spying agencies on the one hand and Facebook and Google on the other are warehousing our data, mining our lives and minting theirs. Teenagers have decided that this infofest offers them too little protection from their parents.

How long before grown-ups decide that data-rich, digital anarchy also offers too little protection to them?

Facebook is accused of reading private messages and selling data: here. See also here.

Facebook purposefully adjusted over 700,000 people?s news feeds to see if it could manipulate their emotions — it could.

Facebook conducts emotion experiments linked to military research on political opposition: here.

The British government requested that Facebook release information on over 2,500 users in a six month period, the social media titan admitted yesterday: here.

It’s not just governments. Companies such as Google and Facebook spy on us too. We have clicked through to their ‘free’ digital services at the cost of sacrificing our privacy. So how do we get out? Here.

The National Security Agency scandal exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden has cost American technology companies billions of dollars in lost revenue as governments and companies in its important export markets of Asia refuse to entrust the handling of sensitive data to US companies: here.

Hey Windows users: ya know how you get error/crash messages every so often? NSA has a unit to use those to track you: here.

The insert method and other variants of QUANTUM are closely linked to a shadow network operated by the NSA alongside the Internet, with its own, well-hidden infrastructure comprised of “covert” routers and servers. It appears the NSA also incorporates routers and servers from non-NSA networks into its covert network by infecting these networks with “implants” that then allow the government hackers to control the computers remotely. (Click here to read a related article on the NSA’s “implants”.): here.